The 44th president invokes our history

Four and a half years ago, "a skinny kid with a funny name" addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, was unknown to most of the nation at that time.

But those who watched his stirring speech knew well that they were seeing something - and someone - special. Some might have even believed at the time that they were watching a future president of these United States.

That most-improbable journey reached the finish line yesterday, even as it began completely anew.

Barack Obama is our nation's 44th president.

Except for extraordinary circumstances, the transition of power in America occurs seamlessly. Jan. 20 begins with one man as chief executive and ends with another in the top job. That's how it was 212 years ago, when George Washington handed the reins to John Adams, and that is how it went yesterday.

A new president is on the job. But the problems we had yesterday morning are still with us today.

The sagging economy. The threats from terrorists. A health care system increasingly in disarray.

Obama acknowledged all of our present difficulties, but he looked also to the past, to our history.

Said the new president: "Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true."

Obama spoke of the need for unity, but he talked, too, of "a new era of responsibility."

From the first, the citizens of this great nation have endured, working together to handle whatever we have been handed. Wars. Economic calamities. Natural disasters.

The people of this nation have pitched in and done what was needed of them.

And that, Obama said in his inaugural address, is what we will do - what we must do - once again.